An undeniably sad record, but one of understated beauty: a lonely, faithful votive flickering brightly against the odds.

Nothing Was the Same is Drake and 40's most audacious experiment yet in how far inward they can push their sound; a lot of the album sounds like a black hole of all 40's previous productions being sucked into the center. Song-to-song transitions, which have always been melty and blurry, are more notional than ever.

They've rediscovered their broad range and proud, sleeve-worn strangeness.

Miss Anthropocene thrills when it reveals a refined, linear evolution of Grimes’ long-standing interest in rave nostalgia and alluring pop music from around the world.

Tip of the Sphere again rejects easy definitions and expectations, growing and surprising with every listen.

So naturally the big question now is if the rest of Get Color lives up to the promise of 'Die Slow.' The answer is that it does... kind of.

Drum's Not Dead is a majestic victory lap, and on all levels, a total fucking triumph.

A marvel of pure songcraft.

On Show Your Bones the Yeah Yeah Yeahs occupy only one corner of the territory they claimed on Fever, walking confidently in their own footsteps but without claiming any new ground.

No Burden is an uncommonly warm indie rock record.

Their most modest record to date. Think of Closer to Grey as an auteur’s niche art project—satisfying to the superfans, though not necessarily winning over new ones.

Surprisingly enough, the album’s highlight comes in “Sit Around the Fire,” which was surely Hopkins’ riskiest move. The deeply moving piano-synth track features the late spiritual leader Ram Dass speaking to a congregation in 1975.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with This Old Dog, it’s more that DeMarco is keeping his sights low. Some people might appreciate this record more than his last two, with the extra refinement of the sound, others may prefer the earlier stuff, which had a bit more humor and with lyrics that painted more colorful pictures.

It’s another down-the-middle, crowd-pleasing Ryan Adams record at a time when that crowd was expecting him to bring the heat.

It's all delivered with sheer glee, and some of it is among the most wicked fun committed to record in 2015.

Even if Here, the band’s 10th album, finds Teenage Fanclub comfortable with their identity and largely uninterested in testing its boundaries, they still find some room for experimentation.

By putting old sounds into different contexts, Nite Jewel’s albums work as an exploration of a happier nostalgia. Because she takes a specific sound as her point of departure this time around, Real High is her most focused work yet.

Even at their most rigorous, these compositions manage to hold the listener close—a bare but rewarding intimacy.

The chaos comes on the very next track, “Grease in Your Hair,” one of a couple songs that performs the National’s old sleight of hand: working the anxiety around until they pull an anthem out of thin air. As a way to address one of the primary tensions in their catalog—writing songs about dissatisfaction in spite of great conventional success—it’s a great bit. But as Frankenstein moves from wrestling to reckoning, the swells are tamer.

While it's certainly enjoyable, it's also a bit more generic than anything they've done before.

Galás’ sense of dynamics is all the more moving when you sort of know how the song’s supposed to go.

There’s something nostalgic about Young, who feels much closer in spirit to the outspoken rebellion of Winehouse or Lily Allen than the puritanical, sober, “clean girl” stereotype of her generation.

Although Tchad Blake's mixing is a fabulous constant, his consistency means the weaker tracks are revealed for what they are: solid formula-followers lacking the elusive intangible charm that an unexpected note or rhythmic tic can bring.

His admirers will find this record beautiful in the strangest places, while his detractors might choose to see its occasional impenetrable gloom as a kind of desertion in itself.

There's enough of a sweet spot in the clean, backward-leaning production and offbeat samples to allow the record to distinguish itself as more than a sum of disparate parts.

For a collaboration between a songwriter and a producer who helped push her to the outer limits of her vision, Melody's Echo Chamber is an impressively immersive debut.

On Twisted Crystal, Guerilla Toss journey to the edge of the universe and grapple with the mysteries of human existence. Such adventures can be panic inducing, but here they conquer anxiety through curiosity, finding excitement and even solace in abstruseness.

Lungs is a cloud-headed introduction to Welch's world, where It Girl hype, coffins, violence, and ambition combust on impact; it's a platinum-shellacked demo reel drunk on its own hi-fi-ness.